A 17-year-old successfully lobbied the public board to allow high-needs students to write Ontario’s mandatory literacy test.

Alexandra Sevetikidis, 17, fell behind in school while battling bone cancer. She fought a second battle with the Toronto school board to write the province's literacy test, mandatory for graduation.

By:Jessica McDiarmidStaff Reporter, Published on Fri Dec 21 2012

Alexandra Seventikidis lost years of education after she was diagnosed with bone cancer at age 12.

Now 17, Seventikidis attends a special program through the Toronto s District Public School Board in which she gets extra help catching up on her academic work. Now cancer-free for nearly five years, Seventikidis wants to graduate, go to university and work in medicine.

But this fall she learned the school board was no longer offering students in so-called Section 23 programs a chance to write the province’s literacy test, which is mandatory for high school graduation.

Section 23 programs serve high-needs students who obtain their education outside of a regular classroom, in places such as hospitals, psychiatric institutions, correctional facilities or day support programs. The Toronto board program, which includes more than 1,000 students, works with 33 agencies, providing teachers and support staff at 72 sites.

All Section 23 students working toward a diploma are supposed to have the opportunity to write the standardized test, according to the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO), which administers it.

But Seventikidis, who attends classes through Delisle Youth Services, said students in her class were told they couldn’t write it unless they enrolled in a mainstream high school — or they could take a special literacycourse to satisfy the graduation requirement. Already behind, she said, taking an additional course wasn’t a viable option for her, nor was returning to a regular school.

“It’s just kind of disappointing,” said Seventikidis, who receives support in the program for an anxiety disorder she developed during cancer treatment, which included chemotherapy. “If they want to help these kids in their future . . . that’s apparently the goal — to graduate with their peers and succeed — they should be offered what mainstream schools offer.

“I don’t see why we shouldn’t be treated equally.”

In October, Seventikidis wrote to Joy Reiter, principal of the Toronto board’s Section 23 schools, with a petition from Delisle students. Reiter assured the students she was “working to try to resolve this issue.”

By December, as the deadline to register for the test approached, Seventikidis’ mother got their family doctor involved.

“I didn’t believe it; that’s why I phoned the school,” said Dr. Rosemary Hutchison, who called on teachers, supervisors and administrators to help Soumela Seventikidis, a single mother whose second language is English, draft a letter to administrators.

“It’s just putting out road blocks in front of the most vulnerable students in your system.”

Hutchison also contacted the Star. And within hours of a call to the board, students were told they could take the test this academic year.

According to Richard Jones, the EQAO’s director of assessment and reporting, no Toronto board students wrote the literacy test last year. Province-wide, more than 250 Section 23 students did so.

TDSB spokesperson Shari Schwartz-Maltz said there were “challenges” in the 2011-2012 school year, the only year the literacy test wasn’t offered to Section 23 students. She said she couldn’t go into detail, but confirmed the tests would be offered in future.

Jane Bray, executive director of the George Hull Centre, which also offers Section 23 programs, said teachers were notified at a meeting that 2010-2011 would be the last year the literacy test was offered to TDSB students.

“They were told that it was because of the high failure rate of kids in Section classrooms,” Bray wrote in an email. “They were also told that it didn’t make sense to create extra stress for the kids who were in the Section classrooms, that they had other more pressing issues to deal with. Our teachers support this, as do we.”

Many students wouldn’t do well in the literacy test, Bray said in an interview. “But they should have the opportunity.”

Trustee John Hastings, who sits on the board’s Special Education Advisory Committee, said he was “dismayed” to learn students hadn’t been able to write the test, calling it “contrary to the board’s philosophy.”

“It’s an extremely bad situation that occurred, but it did,” Hastings said. “We will not have this happen again.”

Schwartz-Maltz said there were no complaints in the 2010-2011 year.

But Janet Rodriguez, whose son Lawrence attends Delisle, said she did complain after learning last fall that he would not be able to write the literacy test in the spring of 2012.

Rodriguez said she had a “lengthy” conversation with administrators, telling them: “I didn’t want my son and his peers held back. They should have the privilege of writing the test like their fellow students.”

She was relieved when told the test would be offered to Section 23 students in April 2013. She hopes her son will be able to write the test now.

“But there’s a whole year of students who lost out on an opportunity,” said Rodriguez. “Those kids have really lost out.”

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